


Such Are Hollow Men

by TheoMiller



Category: Knight & Rogue - Hilari Bell
Genre: Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Seriously this is dark, dying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-25
Updated: 2014-09-25
Packaged: 2018-02-17 14:44:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2313278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheoMiller/pseuds/TheoMiller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fisk is diagnosed with a bacterial infection and given 24 hours to live.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Such Are Hollow Men

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings for death, suicide, and dying.
> 
> For the strong of heart - consume with "C'est La Mort" by The Civil Wars and the poem "Hollow Men".
> 
> (Trope Bingo: 24 hours to live.)

24.

I felt hollow. No, not hollow – I felt like some animal in a taxidermist’s shop, perfect on the outside but full of ash and dust and nothing left alive.

Fisk was talking to the doctor, asking about – asking about me. If I’d been infected. If they’d place me under protective custody after. Which was dumb, ridiculous, unthinkable. There was no _after_ Fisk.

“You’re going to be okay,” I said, interrupting the doctor telling me I had to avoid sharing bodily fluids with Fisk. It came out as a whisper, but the doctor stopped talking anyway.

“Yeah,” said Fisk. “I’m gonna be fine.”

22.

Maybe I wasn’t an animal. Maybe I was just a silhouette. All hard edges, all shadow, but nothing left of actually _me_. I felt like I was frozen in place. Fisk must’ve seen something in my face, though, that made him reach over and take my hand.

“Don’t check out on me,” Fisk said. “You know I hate hospitals.”

21.

Numbness had faded into anger, and I desperately wanted to punch something. But Fisk shouldn’t remember me like that.

“You going to eat that jello?” I asked, gesturing to the tray of awful hospital food, and Fisk smiled.

19.

Fisk’s eyes were bloodshot.

“Do you remember,” I said, “when we drank that old lady’s moonshine, and you fell off her tire swing because it hit you too fast?”

“I remember,” said Fisk. “You broke her porch.”

“Those columns were structurally unsound before I tried to climb one.”

“Suuuuure,” Fisk said.

18.

I found a photo album from our theatre years. Fisk had uncovered traditional masks, the smiling and frowning ones. I wished desperately for a mask.

“You should find Makejoye,” Fisk said.

 _After_. It went unsaid. I tried not to hate him for it. For leaving me.

17.

“You believe in an afterlife, right?”

I blinked. Then, “Yeah. But you don’t.”

“It’s not unprecedented, you being right,” he rasped. “Michael?”

“Yes?”

“If you’re right, you’ll be with me, yeah?”

“Fisk,” I said. My voice broke. “Fisk, there’s nothing that’ll keep me from you. Not the gods, and not death.”

15.

The nurses were quiet when they checked on Fisk. One of them, the youngest by far, barely managed to update his chart before she hurried out of the room with her hand to her mouth and her shoulders shaking. I envied her – I couldn’t cry. I was a desert at night, cold and dry.

“Michael,” Fisk said, clutching at my hand. “Michael, promise me you won’t do anything stupid.”

“We both know that’s impossible.”

I was a desert, and he was the sun dying out.

14.

Fisk was frowning at me again, the way he always did when he had a question. “The afterlife is supposed to be unending joy, right?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“But I’ll be alone.”

“Not forever.”

12.

Fisk’s eyes were dull, like the moon covered with clouds. Or stars fading like they do at sunrise – but with no coming dawn.

11.

Fisk gripped my hand tight enough to bruise as the nurse explained in a too-flat voice that he was going to start losing eyesight now, as the bacteria attacked his optic nerve. Neither of us replied, and the nurse gave me a lingering glance as he left.

10.

“Michael?” Fisk whispered. “I can’t see at all now.”

It was then that I had my first wild hope for a miracle cure. I’d never believed in miracles – the only god that gave a damn about what humans did was death itself, so it’s up to us to take care of each other – but I wished I could.

(I still couldn’t.)

9.

“What time is it?”

“Five am.”

“You need to sleep, Michael.”

“No.”

7.

I’d gone to University. I know biology, know how fragile our bodies are, how our hearts are ticking off a countdown to the inevitable. Hell, I’d known before I knew what the word biology meant, I’d known when the family dog had died and I was seven and I’d sobbed and begged her to wake up, and my father had told me not to wake Kathy.

This was like the difference between kissing my own arm and kissing Ruth with her red hair and her smirk and her constellation of freckles.

One was theory. The other was reality marching inexorably on, as Fisk convinced the nurse who’d cried to bring him one of those tiny, ridiculously priced tubs of ice cream with his best con artist voice and winning smile.

4.

I cried. Fisk ran his fingers through my hair and told me my delayed reactions were making him wonder if I were the one who needed to be hospitalized.

3.

Fisk had never been a very touch-friendly person. But after I’d reached out and pulled back once, twice, seventeen times, he rolled his eyes and inched his way to the side of the bed so I could lie down beside him.

1.

I wanted to say something. Anything.

_You’re—_

_Our life—_

_Fisk, you’re—_

Over a million words in the English language, and all of them inadequate for Fisk.

0.

“I’m in love with you,” Fisk said, when the heart monitor’s beeping became noticeably irregular. “Always have been. I know my timing sucks. I just—I wanted you to know, before.”

I kissed him. His hand twitched – whether to pull me in or push me away, I didn’t know – but he opened his lips on a sigh when I licked the seam of his mouth, and I remembered him complaining about Romeo & Juliet being _satire, Rosamund, stop_ cooing _over it_.

“You’re an idiot,” said Fisk.

I touched my fingers to my lips and waited for the world to end.

**Author's Note:**

> Aaaand then Fisk comes back as a ghost to kick Michael in the balls and sit vigil for his 24 hours. 'Suicide. Is. Not. Fucking. ROMANTIC. Michael!'


End file.
